Thanksgiving, Hanukkah Coincide this Year

It last happened in 1888 and, according to one calculation, won’t happen again for another 77,798 years: the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

This year, Nov. 28 is Thanksgiving and the first full day of the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, which begins at sundown the previous night.

Jews in Green even provided some coloring pages for military kids that mixes the holiday references.

It will be interesting to see how this is treated during the “holiday season” in the US military this year. Christmas and Hanukkah are “traditionally” so close together that nativity scenes are normally accompanied by Menorahs in public displays during December. (One military atheist, though, claimed the inclusion of a Menorah was merely a “token” inclusion to try to hide illegal Christian activity.)

Will Menorahs come out on military bases around Thanksgiving this year, or will they only come out of storage with the Christmas trees in December?